David T. Allen's Blog, page 6

Sprint 7: Two Week Goals are Here to Stay

It’s been a month, man. Countless social obligations, endless work around the homestead, and a three-day plague of migraines. If that wasn’t enough, I’ve been on the receiving end of some drama that left me bummed out.

Despite all that, though, I rocked my sprint. With one scope creep ticket completed, and one unfinished ticket, I’m counting this month 100% successful.

Planning two weeks at a time was a huge boon. It made it easy to know how much time I had, and I actually planned out my task...

Sprint 6b: How Did 2 Week Writing Goals Go?

Since we just moved to a two-week period for setting goals, I wanted to do a quick check-in.

“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.” - Douglas Adams

Retrospective Benefits of Planning 2 Weeks

Leslie liked the change, and thinks setting two-week goals helps create more accurate plans. She said:

More accurately estimating how much I can get done is better for productivity. If I still have 6 things on my list on a Saturday, I’m more likely to think, “Eh, ther...

45 Example Hooks from Adventure Movies

While writing a hook for our first full-length novel, Echo Chamber Heist, I decided to look at some hooks from adventure movies. I included them here, all in one place, to make it easier for you to start your own research.

I borrowed these hooks from IMDb and Amazon. For many of these series, at least with Amazon, the hook begins to rely on the success of the prior movies instead of the stand-alone film. I included them all, so you can see for yourself what works.

Back to the Future Harry Pott...

Sprint 6: Let’s Try Setting 2 Week Writing Goals

Last month, we made significant gains on a print edition for Dream Eater’s Carnival and used our first KDP promotion. Our next book, currently titled Echo Chamber Heist, advanced a little further. The new scope creep “feature” was informative, so it’s time to try something new with this month’s goals.

What Was Fun?

I like to include what fun things we did every sprint article to show how we still have time to enjoy ourselves, even though I work a somewhat demanding job at a startup. We didn’t...

4 Tips Worth Repeating from Writing Excuses, Season 7

Writing Excuses is a podcast run by four successful authors that’s unique because each episode is only fifteen minutes long. This constraint keeps the content focused. Leslie and I listen to them when we’re cleaning or working out, and if we find an especially good episode, we take notes. Here are four episodes focused on writing that I thought were worth sharing.

Episode 7.17: Guns and Fiction

Episode | Audio | Transcript

Books and other media often portray guns incorrectly. These inaccuraci...

DIY Document Holder

I like writing first drafts, particularly first drafts of tricky chapters, by hand. Being away from a computer helps me focus, and by writing things out, I’m less inclined to scrutinize my writing and delete it before it even has a chance at life.

I hate typing up what I write, though. At least, I hate having to look from the flat surface of my desk to the screen while typing stuff up. The repetitive motion is cumbersome, annoying, and when I have a dozen or more pages to type up, my neck sta...

Sprint 5: Deprioritizing and Scope Creep

I’m a little late with writing this sprint article because Leslie and I have been tied up with promoting Dream Eater’s Carnival using our KDP free days. But, it’s time to talk about how we did in April and what we will strive for in May. This article is focused on deprioritizing tasks and dealing with “scope creep.”

Sprint 4 Retrospective

We accomplished nearly all of our goals in week 1.

Week 2 started with someone in our reading community power reading the first nineteen chapters of Echo Ch...

Comet, the Neighborhood Pig

I was drafting our Sprint 5 article and realized I had a lot to say about the things we did in April. One of our goals is to have more fun, but I didn’t want to overwhelm that article with pictures. In this article, Leslie bought me the greatest shirt ever made and we met the neighborhood pig.

My birthday is in April, so to celebrate, I bought Pokemon Heart Gold and Soul Silver. I never got to trade pokemon when I was a kid, so it was amazing to trade with Leslie. It was also her first real p...

Design Thumbnails Using Imagemagick

To make the site more appealing, I started playing with imagemagick to generate eye-catching thumbnails. Our site still has a long way to go, but I prefer to make small improvements over time to holding up our site (and our writing) for a massive redesign.

The blue borders around thumbnails were an indicator that you can click the image to go to the article, but it feels heavy. It also clashes against images with certain palettes.

Additionally, thumbnails in our blog articles had...

Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine

One of the core plots for our current work-in-progress, Bitlather Chronicles: Echo Chamber Heist, revolves around a mechanical computer conceived by Charles Babbage in the nineteenth century. It’s too soon to talk about our plot, but I’ve relied on two videos today to help me write realistic details into our chapter, The Mountain Engine.

Here’s a seven minute video that describes Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine:

What the Difference Engine looked and sounded like:

The engine wa...